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I was just informed that March is SOL challenge month. It’s a cruel, cruel world. We have to make SOL every single day. I don’t know if I will survive this deadly month. Okay, that was a little ( lot ) over the top of the ice cream cone. Yeah, that was a metaphor.
That’s kind of like saying over the mountain but in your mind picture a mountain sized ice cream cone with a ton of chocolate going right on the top and turning it into a chocolate avalanche. Did you do that? Good for you. Now I will grant you as many wishes as you want. NOT!! I am not a genie. But if I had one wish it would be not doing any Slice of Life challenge posts ever again. That is how bad I don’t want to do the Slice of Life challenge.
by Andrew, Feb. 21, 2017
“Andrew, the Slice of Life Challenge is voluntary. Are you saying you don’t want to try it this year? Should I make you a sticker chart?”
“I’m not making any promises. Yeah, go ahead, make me a chart.”
I teach my gifted students year to year throughout their elementary schooling. This is a blessing and a curse. I am blessed to know my students really well. I don’t have to pretest to find their reading levels. I don’t have to do writing prompts to see how well they write. I know all this. They also know that when March rolls around it’s torture time. Time to write a Slice of Life every day!
Every year I try something new to motivate my students. Last year it was these buttons designed by Stacey Shubitz of the Two Writing Teachers. My students proudly collected badges until about March 15th when the newness wore off.
I also use incentives. One day of the month I hold a commenting challenge. The reward, one Skittle a comment. I soon ran out of Skittles. I buy a book for each child who completes the challenge. I usually buy 3-5 books.
Another thing we’ve done is connected with other classes doing the challenge. I’d like to do that again this year. If your class is using Kidblogs, please request to follow by signing in to Kidblog and posting my URL, http://kidblog.org/class/mrs-simons-sea/. Click on the Follow button. Once I approve, I can follow you back. It’s fun and motivating to connect kids across the globe.
After seeing Holly Mueller’s students’ long slices, I implemented a word count rule. This has been both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is found when my students elaborate and expand their thoughts like you see in Andrew’s post above. The curse happens when they ramble on and type things like, “I’m up to 198 words, just 2 more to go!”
This is the nature of the beast that is SOLC! Blessings and curses! We are going to jump in despite the deep waters. Tomorrow we return from a break. Our challenge will begin. I wonder where this journey will take us.
I wrote a blog post for Kidblogs about the Slice of Life Classroom Challenge here.
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Reflections on the Teche 
Kudos to you for encouraging your students to slice daily. I “made” my son write in a journal when he was in high school many years ago. He fought fiercely against doing it, but the book is a treasure now.
Isn’t it funny how they whine and complain but at the same time value the work? I thought my students would just flat out refuse to do it this year, but they’ve all signed on for their sticker charts.
It wasn’t easy convincing my students that writing every day meant their writing would get better & that they’d have fun. Many wrote like Andrew, thought it was ‘over the top”, but they did it! Glad to hear some of your students are writing, too, Margaret!
Your post made me smile. I could hear and picture you and your students.I could also relate to your students. I’m working on leading a more writerly life. I greatly admire Slicers especially during the 30 day challenge. I’m not there Yet..but perhaps some skittles and a sticker chart can move me forward. 🙂 Your students are lucky to have you for a teacher! Thank you for the inspiration.
Hi Margaret, if you’d like to use any images from my website or blog to write ekrastic poems feel free to use one or I can send you one. Hope it goes well! The daily challenge s while working are a handful.
My comment slipped away from me before I could insert the few letters left out-ekphrastic poems.
[…] post is also part of “DigiLit Sunday,” hosted by Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche. This week’s topic is Slicing Our Lives. Please be sure to visit Margaret’s blog to […]
This is only my second year for the individual challenge and I decided to add my class to the class SOL challenge. Thanks for all your hints and help. So far the students have been excited – let’s see how next week goes. I did link to follow your class.
I accepted your request. We will get started tomorrow. Thanks for following.
I love that you nurture them through the challenge, Margaret. It’s called a challenge for a reason, right. It definitely isn’t easy! You capture the responses and reactions so well!
I haven’t been able to convince any teachers to give the SOLSC a try. I can imagine we’d have many of the same issues you’re facing. Motivational tools are fine, but ultimately, their (and our) motivation has to come from within. I’ll be curious to know if Andrew’s feelings change over the course of March.
Oh, Andrew! 😉 I had to laugh about how the word count requirement is both a blessing and curse. I JUST taught a mini-lesson on focus in a Slice of Life and how NOT to just bounce around randomly just to get to the 250 words. I emphasized going back adding more description instead. 😉
I’ve said this to my students over and over again. We’ve been writing 250 words on Tuesdays. I am going to relax a bit for the March challenge and accept 200 as well as poems.
Margaret, I am always impressed how you motivate your students to write and make it meaningful. While Andrew is bemoaning his fate, he is writing with voice. I wonder if he feels proud about that.
[…] is Sunday. It’s great for two reasons: Margaret Gibson’s DigiLit Sunday and it’s the best day of the week for me. And today’s DigiLit Sunday is about Slice of […]
SOL is such a great opportunity for students to flex their writing minds. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I wish I were still teaching to connect our classes. Enjoy March and writing!
Margaret,
Just wondering. Are your students participating in 100 word challenge?
What is Digit Lit Sunday?
Best.
Purviben
@TrivediZiemba
https://trivediziemba.edublogs.org
I don’t know about the 100 word challenge. Tell me more. DigiLit Sunday was a weekly round up that I used to host at my blog. Participation became low, so I let it go. Thanks for stopping by and exploring old posts.
Margaret,
My apologies for not responding soon.
Created by Julia Skinner @100Word and @TheHeadsOffice both 100word challenge and 5 sentence challenge are
geared toward kids below 16. Each week kids respond to a prompt or a picture, write a blog post and then complete a Google Form to submit the blog post. The mentors as as well as others visit the blog and comment on them. The beauty is that, the mentors are assigned 5-10 (or increment of 5) blog numbers each. The numbers are in order of the posts submitted by the kids. Therefore, you are not reading posts from each student each week. Obviously, you may choose to bookmark a blogger and visit his posts each week.
The classroom teachers can set up the blogs as classroom blogs and can have moderation activated.
The goal is to have students write and receive comments in safe environment. It provides one more way of young bloggers having an receptive, authentic audience and connections. By participating in 100 WC, I have mentored students as far as Australia and as close as Illinois.
Best wishes.
Purviben